


What's become of Asriel/Since he gave us all the slip?

by AquitaineQueen24



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen, if only she had asked, real shame we didn't get to see more of Tullio or Paradisi, so what would have happened in the 'lost asriel episode'?, what might the alethiometer have told Lyra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28206021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquitaineQueen24/pseuds/AquitaineQueen24
Summary: 'Something's happened here, Pan.''Asriel?''I wouldn't put it past him.''Should we asked the alethiometer where everyone is?''No. We're not asking that thing anything.'(And so we're left to wonder what precisely happened to Asriel and Stelmaria after they stepped through the hole they tore between the worlds...)
Relationships: Lord Asriel & Stelmaria, Lyra Belacqua & Pantalaimon
Kudos: 7





	What's become of Asriel/Since he gave us all the slip?

**Author's Note:**

> Two spoilers right at the end of the story and in the endnotes, if you haven't read The Amber Spyglass and seen the Season Two finale!

If Lyra _had_ chosen to ask the alethiometer at that moment in that ghostly city, it might have told her that Asriel and Stelmaria (long used to clambering up and down mountains, travelling on foot for long stretches though worse mists than the one they found themselves in now) had spotted the lights of Cittàgazze through the constant foggy haze, days before Lyra and Pan did. They had crossed at low tide to enter a warm living city, not this husk left barely breathing.

The alethiometer might have told Lyra how very strange Asriel and Stelmaria found everything, how they stared at the people jostling about them. (Lyra would have stopped breathing when the words ‘no dæmon’ came to her, she would have puzzled over how different this meaning was from the hints the truth-teller had given her about Billy Costa.) They had reasoned before that in some other universes, dæmons must take different forms, but surely they would _take_ forms. No dæmons at all, that was something to get used to. ( _Never,_ Lyra and Pan would have thought, _never, never.)_

When the citizens of Cittàgazze had time to notice the pair amidst their larger worries – such a cursed mist, where had it come from, no one could set sail, no ships could come to dock! - they thought Stelmaria to be a tame pet. Several children drew close in hopes of being permitted to touch and stroke her. The man warned them off with a glare, the dæmon growled at small fingers itching to break the Great Taboo, hiding her fear at how they _dared._ (Pan would have bristled in horror, shifting to a fox as he was lost to memories of clutching hands in Bolvanger.) In this world there were apparently no dæmons and thus no taboo, in this world they couldn’t afford to offend these people, they didn’t know the rules to break them.

The alethiometer might have mentioned how Asriel and Stelmaria passed a pair of laughing girls sat side by side on a doorstep, dark and lightheaded, both of them perhaps of an age with Lyra, so that the pair thought of their daughter and that boy screaming in the cage. They had hurried on with heavy stomachs. (Lyra would have spat at the knowledge and at Asriel, wondering what had happened to the girls.)

The alethiometer would have said that the man and dæmon very quickly caught the attention of the authority in at least this part of the world, the Guild of Philosophers; that through various means Asriel ended up drinking wine with Guido Paradisi in the catacombs of the Tower of Angels. (‘More wine,’ Pan would have said, ‘just like how this all started.’) It would have told Lyra that Paradisi was wary of the beings he knew to be from another world (which Lyra would have remarked was smart of him) he grew more afraid of this pair with every word the man spoke (Lyra would have thought him all the more smart) he wondered with horror what Asriel had done to break so violently out of his own universe.

(Lyra and Pan might have thought that a man who feared and hated Asriel would wish to thwart him, and so would have asked their own way to the Tower of Angels. They could even have found Tullio, whom the alethiometer might not have told them of even though he drew Asriel, this stranger, into an alley to warn him of the ‘guild of thieves’ with its power and corruption, its poisoning of this world - just before the Guild’s enforcers arrived to convey man and dæmon to Paradisi. Tullio was left behind to watch the Tower of Angels, desperate for himself, his parents, his sisters Angelica and Paola.)

The alethiometer would have told Lyra of the moment the fog about the city suddenly, terribly cleared and the inhabitants saw what had been waiting for them.

So many. Hundreds.

Chaos. Swarming and feasting. Adults running for their lives, with or without their children. The philosophers fleeing in every direction alongside the people they failed to serve, as easy a meal as any other human. Paradisi trying to fight the Spectres off and only retreating into the Tower when there were simply too many. Tullio following him into the Tower, full of hate and the belief that he could fix this new horror the guild created. The alethiometer would not have told Lyra of Tullio waiting and stalking Paradisi for days afterwards, finally ambushing the Bearer and taking the knife; she didn’t know to ask for that.

What it might have told her instead was that Asriel and Stelmaria fled the Tower and followed the citizens racing to the docks. When some poor bastard was knocked into the water by one of those dreadful clouds, the pair leapt into the boat he’d finished untying. They would have pulled the man aboard if he had resurfaced, but the cloud followed him below the waves and they saw no more of him. Asriel strained at the oars to get them out on the open sea. Everywhere, screams dying away or being cut off at their peak. Man and dæmon were ready to fight if one of the dreadful clouds came for them, though they’d seen people fall before these creatures and knew fighting did no good. (If she’d asked then, Lyra would have learned of the nature of the Spectres, and wondered in fear, and perhaps thought of intercision and the silver guillotine far sooner.)

Nothing came for Asriel and Stelmaria in their escape by sea. None of the spectral things seemed to even notice them. Asriel rowed them away and they listened to Cittàgazze die.

The alethiometer would never have said whether Asriel and Stelmaria knew: that _they_ were to blame for this. It would never have told Lyra of her father clutching his head and asking the air, the sea, the heavens of this hellish world they had come to, ‘Why didn’t they attack us?’

Lyra would have refused to ask what came next, she would have shut the alethiometer and packed it away. She would never learn of how Asriel and Stelmaria heard the voice of the angel Xaphania once they reached the shore of that sea; or how Asriel planned his petition of Xaphania’s followers to follow him in turn to build the Republic of Heaven; or how they first encountered Lord Roke and were reunited with King Ogunwe, who had followed Xaphania through another window between the worlds. Lyra would never ask if Asriel felt any guilt at knowing there had been other windows all the time, and that he had killed Roger for _nothing._

She never asked. In this world and the next and every other world after that, living or dead, Lyra would never see Lord Asriel again.

**Author's Note:**

> So this grew from my curiosity about what exactly the 'lost episode' of Season Two would have been like; from the snippets we've been given, we know that it would have taken place largely in Cittagazze before the Spectres attacked, Tullio would have played a fairly large part (I feel really sorry for Lewis MacDougall, who plays Tullio!) and at some point Asriel would have made the speech about making war on the Authority to Xaphania and her followers, which thankfully found its way into the season finale instead.
> 
> Personally I also believe Asriel and Paradisi were meant to have at least one scene together, because you don't cast Terence Stamp and FAIL to put him in a scene with James McAvoy.
> 
> It'd be fun to explore this idea at greater length, depending on how many further details we're given about the 'lost episode'; for now I enjoyed sketching out the broad idea of what I think the plot might have been without going into too many specifics, since the alethiometer likely wasn't going to replicate whole conversations for Lyra. It was a massive relief!
> 
> The title is inspired by the first lines of Robert Browning's poem 'Waring'.


End file.
